This invention relates generally to methods and systems for communicating key business metrics within a business organization and more particularly to intranet-based systems and methods for monitoring business metrics, automatically updating such metrics, and generating alert notifications in the event certain metrics are above or below predefined criteria.
As used herein, the term “business metrics” means measurements of business-related activities and results. The metrics used by each business typically varies depending upon the nature and focus of the business. For example, a particular business may emphasize new product introductions and therefore define metrics related to product introduction processes. Other businesses may emphasize cost reduction activities on existing products and therefore define metrics related to cost reduction processes. Example business metrics include customer-centric metrics such as customer savings, on-time deliveries, and quality, core business metrics such as total revenue, variable costs, base costs, cash flow, and net income, and functional metrics such as metrics for sales, marketing, manufacturing, engineering, finance, environmental health and safety, and legal.
Such business metrics typically are reviewed by business leaders and others within a business organization on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. Simply generating quantified values for each defined metric can be a time consuming and tedious task, especially for a large business organization with businesses located throughout the world. In addition, business reports typically are reported in paper form, and are delivered to designated business team members by manual internal mail or electronic mail. Consequently, the business team members typically do not have access to current information anytime and anywhere. That is, the team members typically must wait until a report has been generated and has been delivered in order to access such information.